How Gypsum Drywall Revolutionized Modern Construction

Minecraft is not real life; you cannot stack blocks of dirt infinitely high. This is a shame, because dirt has a lot going for it as a construction material.

To render dirt into a plausible building material, you need an adhesive, a binder, and a way to make it fireproof.

Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate. It's abundant, cheap, and has a unique property: when heated, it loses water and becomes plaster of Paris.

The real breakthrough came when someone figured out how to sandwich gypsum plaster between two sheets of paper, creating what we now call drywall or plasterboard.

Drywall enabled the mass production of housing, the standardization of construction, and the rapid expansion of American suburbs after World War II.